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Home » To Hell with the Democrats!: Time to for Any Real Progressives in Congress to Bolt the Party and Start a New One

To Hell with the Democrats!: Time to for Any Real Progressives in Congress to Bolt the Party and Start a New One

July 21, 2011 - 1:17pm  lindorff

by:

Dave Lindorff

Glenn Greenwald has just written that President Obama, by playing a leading role in pushing for cuts in Social Security benefits as part of the whole kabuki-theater drama over the debt ceiling, and the alleged crisis of America’s national debt, has cut out the “soul” of the Democratic Party.

Let’s start by saying that if the Democratic Party ever had a soul, it was sold long ago to the Evil Ones who run corporate America, and especially the horned legions on Wall Street. But the point Greenwald makes is a good one: Obama and his backers in the Democratic Party in Congress -- the power brokers like Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and the sell-outs like Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Mark Warner (D-VA), who are the Democratic half of the so-called Gang of Six currently putting forward a proposal to raise working class taxes while cutting taxes for the rich, and to slash $3 trillion from programs that are critically important for the poor and the sick -- have abandoned any commitment they and the party might once have had to working class America and to the poor and have gone over completely to a strategy of trying to compete with Republicans in currying the favor of the rich and the powerful.

There is at this point only one thing to do, and it’s not to encourage some liberal figure to run a quixotic primary campaign against Obama for the 2012 Democratic Presidential campaign. Nor is it to write a letter to the President vowing not to vote for any reduction in Social Security Benefits, as 61 House members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus did late this week.

It is to move forward with a strategy to develop a fully-competitive progressive Third Party to run races in every Congressional district and for every Senate seat up for grabs in 2012, and to run a serious candidate for President.

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Exhibit 1: The sad state of alternative media:

This article was submitted to both Truth Out and Common Dreams for publication on their sites, which have been filled with articles criticizing President Obama's sellout of traditional Democratic Party principles supporting Social Security and Medicare. Neither site has been willing to run this story. Common Dreams has gone further, actually pulling a letter I wrote in the comment section of a Sunday CD piece by Jeff Cohen which was calling for Bernie Sanders to run in the Democratic Primary against Obama. My letter made the point that running in a primary against Obama would only lead Obama to again lie about his being a progressive, only to ignore any promises he might make should he be re-elected. In the letter, I linked to this article, and mentioned that CD had chosen not to run it. Apparently, at Common Dreams, letters criticizing CD editorial decisions are not allowed, yet this is exactly one of the criticisms we on the left have been leveling at the NY Times and other corporate media for years. So how different then is Common Dreams from the MSM? How different is Truthout for that matter, if it cannot run pieces that are outside of its own political viewpoint? Another reason why readers of this particular online newspaper should be sending us financial support.
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